


Don't Leave Me Here Alone

by semele



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-07 05:12:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11052021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: Bellamy and Raven live in a world in which you're born with your soulmate's first words to you written on the skin of your forearm, but despite having grown up on the same planet, they never met there, too busy trying to survive. He was brought from rags to riches then back to rags by a marriage and a divorce. She escaped the planet Ark as a teenager, hoping that she's found her soulmate, but it didn't quite work out that way. At least she got her own tiny spaceship out of it. Now they're both bounty hunters, and when they are forced to team up for this one job, it doesn't look like it's going to go well.





	1. Punk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shortitude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/gifts), [MarauderCracker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/gifts).



> This is based on a roleplay thread I did with shortitude ages ago, and I've been planning to turn it into a fic for months. I kept not being able to wrap by head around it, then it suddenly clicked, and it took me less than two days to churn out three chapters. Guys, I haven't been so inspired to write for actual AGES. Kindly enjoy the result.
> 
> The rating is high because I'm planning some stuff in later chapters.
> 
> Also, I miiiight have included some past Bellamy/Clarke. Please don't tell my girlfriend that I'm petty.
> 
> I'm writing this at a fairly steady pace, and I want to be done with it quickly, so for now, please expect a chapter every Wednesday and every Saturday!

_For me love’s like the wind, unseen, unknown  
I see the trees are bending where it’s been  
I know that it leaves wreckage where it’s blown  
I really don’t know what "I love you" means  
I think it means "don’t leave me here alone”_   
**Neil Gaiman**

All in all, the crew from the last two jobs wasn’t actually half bad. What’s even more important, the jobs were clean, all things considered. Just some spoiled kids, hitching what mostly amounted to elaborate space joy rides, then swearing and sputtering when they got caught, mad that their play was cut short.

They’ll be fine, thinks Bellamy bitterly. Their parents will bail them out in no time at all, right in time for him to catch them again on some job in seven months’ time.

Well, if he thinks that, he doesn’t share his thoughts with Anya, who’d likely just grunt at him, then make sure he’d be the one doing the last sweep of all decks as a goodbye present. She’s just petty enough to do it, and somehow, magically, it’s a part of her running a tight ship. Bellamy isn’t sure how it works so well with her people, but they’ve had years to build a rapport, and he can’t even begin to understand how everything works on TonDC. Or any other ship he visits, because it’s not like he’s been permanent crew anywhere ever since he started.

“Come on,” says Indra when she sees him pocket his wages at the end of the day. “A drink with the old crew?”

“No joy,” replies Bellamy, his tone less stiff than it was at the beginning. “Gotta report to Kane.”

“Well, if you gotta. But find us in the pub on the surface when you’re done. I’ll miss you, punk.”

“Right.”

But he still can’t help a smile when he throws his bundle of everything over his shoulder, and heads towards Kane’s office. Punk. Fancy that. It’s been a while since someone called him that.

Walking into Kane’s office always feels a little bit like stepping into old shoes. It’s all snug and familiar, but the smell isn’t something you would necessarily have chosen for yourself. Oh well. Bellamy hasn’t been back to Ark in three years, so those small encounters in the office are the only glimpses of his old planet he ever gets. He can’t say he’s ever been tempted to increase the dosage.

Kane looks up from his paperwork to see who just marched in, and once he spots Bellamy, he makes this face he always makes, a mixture of awkwardness, discomfort, and a deep wish to be anywhere but here. _Greetings, father-in-law,_ Bellamy wants to say. _How’s my ex-wife? Still kicking? And how’s yours?_

He never says that, of course. Bitterness aside, Kane is doing him a solid here, month after month, and it’s not like he had to. After the divorce, there was absolutely no obligation left in place, but Kane still took Bellamy in, and got him a job with someone ship in his vast fleet. Then there was another one, swiftly followed by the next, and within a year, they had an understanding quite outside of their aborted family history. Bellamy knows he can count on Kane and his little tasks whenever he’s starting to run out of money. Kane knows that when he has something sensitive, there is a guy ready just for that. And by the look of his face today, he’s about to call in a favor right about now.

“How did it go with Anya?” he asks first, always a sucker for obligatory forty seconds of polite small talk.

“All good. Job done without a hitch, and her second calls me ‘punk’. I think that means she approves.”

They look a bit like taken out of Moby Dick or something like that, Kane sitting at a desk full of papers, Bellamy standing over him with a cloth sack thrown over his shoulder, feet set wide, face indifferent. All that’s missing are some goose quills, or whatever the hell people used back then.

(He knows exactly what people used back then. He just doesn’t like to remember.)

“It probably does,” says Kane casually, then picks up a page as if he needs a cheat sheet for what he has planned for Bellamy next. Please. He must’ve known for days. Why else would he have sent summons within two hours of TonDC landing on his turf? “So. There is this girl.”

“There usually is.”

Kane scoffs, and pushes the page towards Bellamy.

“Big Bird. Tiny ship, despite the name. The pilot usually flies on her own, and I don’t say anything because she gets the job done, but for this one, I’m putting my foot down. It’s three fugitives. She only has so many hands.”

Bellamy doesn’t even try to dispute. He just shoves the job specs into his pocket without reading, because when Kane asks him a favor in this kind of dramatic set-up, it’s usually not a request. Whatever. He can fly with a lone wolf. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“So what’s wrong with her?”

“The ship?”

Bellamy rolls his eyes.

“The girl.”

Kane pulls at his own right sleeve at that, as if making sure that everything is in place. There are different customs on different planets, but on Ark, where Bellamy and Kane are from, it’s bad manners to let your forearm tattoo show. Not quite like walking around naked, no – but close. Kane’s subconscious gesture makes Bellamy want to check his sleeve too, but he stops himself. It’s fine. He hasn’t been on Ark for three years, and he’s now a man of the world. Even if his tattoo is poking out a little bit, it’s not like Kane is his soulmate and is about to have a rude awakening. If that was the case, they would’ve discovered it ages ago.

“She’s an amazing pilot. Doesn’t like company. Isn’t too happy about having to have some.”

Right. That makes sense. Well, it’s not like he needs her to like him to get the job done.

“When do you need me to be there?”

“In about four hours.”

Here went his evening plans, not that he had anything specific in mind. He still feels vaguely bitter about not getting to blow some of his wages on bonbons. Or, like, a new pair of shoes.

“Okay then. Tell your lone wolf not to bite. I’ll be there. Need to say goodbye to the old crew. I want Indra to keep liking me.”

And with that, he excuses himself, trying not to think too much about the upcoming mission, then failing miserably. Why would Kane give him so few details? Not even the pilot’s name, not even the destination. It’s all written on the specs, yes, but Kane usually likes to give a full briefing. So what did Bellamy just walk into?

One look at the quickly unfolded specs explains everything, and Bellamy swears like a sailor, following the marine cliche. Ark. Fucking Ark. The three fugitives are on Ark, and he just agreed to go there without as much as asking. This day is getting better and better by the minute.

By the time he finds his old crew in the bar, he’s in a pretty foul mood. Foul enough to drop his shit on the ground with a loud thump, then call out to the barman. 

“I’ll have six of whatever those guys are having. Looks like good stuff.”

If he doesn’t have time to buy shoes, he might as well treat the crew. They saved his ass often enough.

He spends the next two hours sitting next to Indra, and getting progressively louder, all broad arms and loose words, watch me. I was a soldier turned trophy husband, and there is no trace of that whatsoever. Look at the slouch, look at the swearing and spitting. You wouldn’t know. No one would ever know.

Hopefully he’ll be on Ark for little enough that no one will know.

He cuts the party short, and makes sure to take a proper walk on the way back, just to air his head out. He might be feeling rebellious and nasty, but he isn’t stupid. If he shows up drunk for a job, Kane will rip him a new one, and Bellamy knows from experience that Kane gets creative with his ripping.

He half-expects Big Bird to be bright yellow, but to his surprise the ship is just painted over with something see-through and high tech, he wouldn’t begin to know, but he’s sure it’s helping with the speed. All in all, it’s a beautiful ship, and Kane’s lone wolf definitely takes good care of her baby. No wonder she doesn’t want anyone’s dirty paws around it.

Or, you know. She’s just one hell of an asshole.

Right now, Bellamy is leaning towards the latter. He can hear screams coming from the cockpit, and even if the can’t recognize words yet, he’s sure one of the voices belongs to Kane. Great. Maybe he should’ve saved the money for the shoes after all, because by the sound if it, he isn’t flying anywhere today.

On the other hand, Bellamy isn’t the only bounty hunter that Kane holds by the balls, so who knows?

As he enters the ship, the screams become a lot more fleshed-out, and now he can make out Kane’s entire tirade about numbers, muscle, importance, and not being so fucking cocky.

“I’ll eat my brace before I let some dick board my ship, you hear me?” comes in a furious voice, and Bellamy stops in his tracks, too shocked to catch Kane’s undoubtedly not-so-witty retort. She said… She couldn’t have. No way.

It’s a stupid impulse to pull up his sleeve now, but he still doesn’t resist it. He knows those letters by heart, has been staring at them maniacally, a year of courtship, four years of marriage, and then ever since, not to mention all the sneaky reading he did before he even met Clarke. He knows every line of the tattoo on his right forearm, like everyone in the ‘verse does theirs. It’s how they chase their destiny; how they find who’s supposed to stick to them in this huge, lonely world. _Soulmate_ , they call it. Someone destined to be so close their words are on your very skin.

And Bellamy apparently just found his.


	2. Smell the rat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to post this on Saturday, but, hey. It's already Saturday in Australia. Next chapter is already written, waiting to be posted on Wednesday!

This is the third time Raven hears her words.

The first one was really the one that taught her a valuable life lesson, because let’s be real for a moment: Nygel shoving your sleeve down and sing-songing “Sit this thing out, little bird” when you’re just eleven and jumping out of your seat to meet your soulmate would make an impression on anyone. The guy never realized that little Raven has rushed towards him, hoping to be taken away, but Nygel still gave her a proper lecture. Some people’s tattoos just say generic shit, honey. Can’t just go off like that. Sit down, eat your vegetables, and see how the situation develops. Even at eleven, Raven knew better than to point out that they haven’t seen vegetables in three weeks.

And anyway, fuck Nygel and fuck vegetables. Next time she heard her words, she rushed into it head first, more or less, and it was a partial win. At least it got her on a ship.

Granted, it was a merchant vessel, but that, at the time, was all for the best. She was so relieved when she first heard Finn, all young and fresh-faced, ordering wares in her workshop to load them on his father’s ship, _I’ll have six of whatever those guys are having_. Raven knew by then that she had to be patient, no jumping from behind the counter or waving her tattoo. She was sixteen and she had her priorities straight, but he was so lovely, so sweet and full of hope, nothing like the vulgar drunk she was imagining every time she remembered her words, so she went for it in the end, and rolled up her sleeves.

His tattoo was nothing like any words she ever said, but he still took her in.

It lasted until it didn’t, and when she met Kyle at twenty, she didn’t even look at tattoos. She had Big Bird already, and she was the shit, flying solo and bringing criminals to justice, with a side of smuggling, because girl’s gotta eat. Kyle was a good change after Finn, no promises or high hopes, except at some point, they came anyway. Don’t you love me? It’s you and me against the world, baby.

That is, until he sold her out to the highest bidder, and left her bleeding on the floor of her own ship.

Raven remembers all these as she’s frantically moving things around her cockpit, no, no way, not again. She’s taking off today, and it can’t be fast enough. She’s not doing this again. Not with the guy in the bar, not with anyone. 

When Kane comes in and reveals that her mission partner is the guy dawdling outside her space ship, Raven takes one look at his face, and just like that, she wants to scream. So she does.

Not that it matters. She owes Kane for that time last month when Big Bird was grounded, and Kane possibly conjured missing parts out of thin air. So here it is: her potential soulmate sounds and walks sober, but the smell isn’t fooling anyone, and Raven is still letting him board her precious ship. It’s all gonna go so well, she can’t fucking wait.

“You can drop your stuff in the mess room. There is a cot there.” A damn uncomfortable one. Serves him right. “And no funny business, got it? Or I’ll float your drunk ass without as much as a warning.”

Kane looks at her with pure horror, as if expecting a fight to break out here and now. Well, that tells Raven something about her soulmate’s personality. Ain’t that lovely.

“You want me to do a blood test?” asks the guy in an even tone, but he smells like a bar, and she heard him at a bar, and if she got a penny for every time she met a cocky drunk…

“Just drop your shit off and come to the cockpit. We’re launching in twenty. Ark is…”

“I know where Ark is.”

Kane gives up on talking at this point, smart enough to quit when he’s ahead, and that leaves Raven with a job spec that clearly has something fishy about it, and an allegedly drunk coworker slash soulmate to babysit. Let’s see how he likes it when he realizes there is not a drop of booze on board. Raven could bet her favorite wrench that the guy is fucking lovely when he starts drying out.

To her surprise, there is no drying out. He sure isn’t winning any awards for his sunny personality, but he shows up in the cockpit twenty minutes later on the dot, and does his part without muttering, quick and efficient. As soon as she dismisses him, he goes straight to the bathroom, and then she sees him in the mess room meticulously hanging out laundry while dressed in some appalling spare set of clothes, with a disgusting pair of worn, military-style shoes and a saggy linen sack resting right next to his cot.

Is this all he has?

In the morning, he smells vaguely like something clean, and it’s all business from then, yes ma’am, no ma’am, let me check. Raven is pretty sure he could actually click his shoes and salute if he put his mind to it, but she tries not to think about it too much. He’s closed-off and formal, that’s for the best. He shows up on time, cleans without being asked, and stays stone-cold sober. After she dismisses him from his shifts, he goes straight to the mess room, and does some murderous work-out routine that leaves him panting and sweating buckets, then he hits the shower, and spends the rest of the evening reading from a worn little tablet he carries around in his pocket, or scribbling on it ferociously. In short, he lives like a nun, if nuns were guys with obvious military history, employed on bounty hunter spaceships.

It’s hard not to watch him closely, maybe because of the goddamned words she heard him say, or maybe he’s just a good distraction from the actual issue at hand. Kane doesn’t do vague job specs, he just doesn’t, and yet this time all he gives is a list of three names, and a helpful suggestion to start with Nygel’s bar on Ark. What, no funny little details? No family, contacts, general shiny objects? Even an idiot would smell the rat here.

“You’ll need to go into the bar to get info,” she tells Bellamy on day five of their journey. “Can’t show my face there. The owner knows I’m a bounty hunter, she’d alert half the planet. I’d rather we weren’t recognized.”

He gives her a look like he wants to argue, but then thinks better of it.

“I haven’t been there a while. Might be able to swing it if I get a change of clothes and keep it low. Not that the old bat ever forgot a person in her life.”

Oh, splendid. So she’s traveling with her countryman.

“Were you a regular?” she asks, unable to keep her mouth shut. Truth is, she would’ve known if he had, she knew all of Nygel’s regulars back in the day, when her mother was one of them. But then, maybe it wasn’t in her days? He looks like he might be too young for that. She’d left with Finn close to ten years ago.

“Yes,” he answers dryly, meeting her gaze with defiance. She hasn’t seen such a clear ‘go fuck yourself’ look in ages. “Yes I was. So what about that change of clothes? Can we land on the other side of Ark and hit the market?”

Now would be a good time to make a snide comment about him getting a new pair of shoes, but for some reason, Raven doesn’t. They both know what kind of a sweetheart Nygel is, and Bellamy tentatively agreed to be the one to sneak into the bar. No need to antagonize him even more.

“Sure,” she says casually, and alters the coordinates slightly. “We have some pocket money from Kane, you can use it. Can’t imagine you’ll buy silks.”

To her surprise, Bellamy gives a small bark of laughter at that, gone before she has a chance to look at it too closely.

“No,” he says as he takes a seat in the co-pilot chair, ready to take over cockpit so Raven can catch a shut-eye. “No, I don’t think I will.”

It’s a small comment, petty and insignificant, but she doesn’t see him smiling again, not even for a blink, so she has to wonder. What the hell is so funny about silks?

Not that it matters, she chastises herself as they near Ark, familiar, steely shapes of the junkyards seen from afar already giving her an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. It’s not like he’s her soulmate or anything.


	3. Jacket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was supposed to wait for midnight so I can post it all properly on a Wednesday, but let's be real, I'll be asleep by the time midnight hits. See you guys on Saturday!

When Bellamy’s terrible shoes hit the familiar ground of his home planet for the first time in three years, he doesn’t quite know how to feel about it.

He definitely has an eerie feeling of coming home, something sweet and vaguely sickening, like childhood candy you’ve been looking forward to tasting again, only to discover that something happened over the years, and now it’s absolutely disgusting. Well, almost like that. He hasn’t really been looking forward to it quite so much.

But now is his once-in-a-few-years chance to visit his sister for free, so he focuses on that. Does she live in a settlement right next to the market where he made Raven drop him off? You bet your ass she does.

He used to come here his whole adult life, even in the brief period when he was rich, so the last three years is actually the longest break he’s ever had. The neighborhood is as drab as he remembers, all straight lines and bare walls, and it’s not exactly dirty, but it doesn’t make you feel like flopping in the grass to enjoy the sun, either. Most of Ark is like this: shabby, but not enough to actually shock, not a good example of anything, really. He’s heard of people complain about all sorts of issues wreaking havoc here over the years, and he agrees on principle, but what hits him the most right now is the abject, utilitarian boredom of the place.

When he approaches O’s stall in the market, she doesn’t recognize him at first, and he decides to see it as a good sign. Maybe he’ll manage to sneak up on Nygel and everyone else as well.

“Holy shit,” she exclaims when she finally spots him, then runs straight into his arms, making a few heads turn. Whatever. It’s not like he has a target on his back or anything. He just wants the whole fugitive operation to go as smoothly as possible.

“You here for good?” she asks into his ear, her hug so tight it almost takes his breath away. Bellamy shakes his head.

“On a job. I’ll try to escape my captain and come see you in the evening, okay? We’ll be parked for a day or two. For now, I need some clothes.”

He can tell she wants to ask some more, wants to get her fill of him, but she has a job to do, and her boss won’t like it if she dawdles. It’s okay. He can wait it out.

“What time’s your break?”

O checks her watch quickly even as she walks towards a hanger full of clothes that should be vaguely his size.

“In an hour. Can you wait?”

Of course he can.

He is actually a customer, enough of Kane’s money in his pocket to buy this entire stand, thanks be to the gods of good rate of exchange, so that buys them extra ten minutes of hurried questions as O picks out an unassuming pair of pants and a round-the-mill jacket, just like the ones he used to wear as a teenager. His current clothes, ironically, are from Ark as well, and he could get around perfectly well wearing them, but their military cut attracts a bit of attention – the kind of attention fugitives would be on a lookout for. 

“I want to burn those,” mutters O as she ogles what he is wearing with disapproval, and for a second, it’s like he never left – never moved away from the tailor’s corner in the settlement, never joined the army, never married Clarke Griffin. He knows this feeling will go away in seconds, but while it lasts, it’s a nice feeling to have. “Where did you roll around in them?”

“Here and there,” he says with a boyish smile, and pulls on the jacket she picked out for him, then stashes his old one in his faithful sack. “You want some stew for lunch? I could wander around and get it while we wait for your break.”

“You sit your ass right here.”

The next hour and a half is eerily happy, so different from sitting on a tiny ship and wondering if your firebrand of a captain who hates you really could be your soulmate. Theoretically, Bellamy knows that you can hear the words on your arm more than once in a lifetime. Hell, his very own ex-wife had a line so generic she heard it at least once every few months. He just never thought it would happen to him, not with his words being so damn bizarre. Those had to be one of a kind, right? How many people talked about eating their braces on a daily basis?

But then, she does hate his guts, and gleefully assumes that he regularly drinks himself into the gutter, and anyway, he doesn’t even believe in the whole soulmate thing to begin with, so he tries not to think about it so much. Right. Clearly, he is doing a splendid job at that.

At least here O distracts him from his misery, and soon he knows almost everything that happened in the neighborhood for the past two weeks. It’s not like they have no contact; they write to each other regularly, even sneak in an odd call now and then, but this proximity they’re enjoying now – that’s a rare treat. O doesn’t grow anymore, she’s turning twenty five soon, but Bellamy kind of forgets when he’s far away from her. Now he has a chance to take her all in, lean frame and pale skin, hands quick as she makes adjustment to the old shirt someone brought her to alter. They don’t look like siblings, never have, but this one thing, they share without a fail: deft fingers and clever stitches he could still repeat even in his sleep. It’s ridiculously calming to be able to watch her work again.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Dramatic asshole.”

He shrugs at the jab.

“No connection on the ship. It’s a tiny thing, just me and the captain.” Or she neglected to link him up on purpose, which, not impossible. “I was trying to write, set it up to send if I caught signal. It’s probably syncing right now. Check.”

She gives him a grin, eyes glued to him.

“Not interested. So, what’s the job? High profile?”

“Top secret. I don’t know shit, O. Just here as the muscle.”

“Right.”

Well, it is mostly true, and he realizes just how true when he goes into Nygel’s bar the following afternoon. After he snuck out on her in the evening to see O again, and only gave one flimsy excuse, Raven makes him wear a comm, and it feels like having a very malevolent bee stuck somewhere around your ear. He technically doesn’t expect to be stung unless he does something stupid, but he can’t be sure what exactly constitutes ‘stupid’ with this particular bee, so better be on alert.

At least it feels like it until she starts whispering instructions.

Raven Reyes, as it turns out, knows this bar like the back of her own hand, and she saves his ass three times in the first ten minutes, preventing him from talking to people who should be okay at first glance, but she knows better. In the end, he gets himself a beer just to be a little shit, then sits at a table like some work-worn shell of a human being who’s too tired to speak to people, and listens. Lets Raven listen, too.

Three quarters into his first beer, some youngster three tables away name-drops Monty Green.

Raven goes quiet in Bellamy’s ear, and he doesn’t feel too inclined to chatter, either, because it becomes abundantly clear how much this shit doesn’t add up. Monty is supposed to be a ring leader of the three fugitives, and yet the people here don’t mention him like he’s a public enemy, or a folk gangster figure. If you believe them, he’s just a guy from the neighborhood, clever and good with the hooch, much like Bellamy was back in his pre-army day, and maybe an additional something else from time to time, but nothing glamorous enough to warrant a life sentence in Mount Weather. That’s a goddamned high security prison. Last time Bellamy had a fugitive from there, it was someone with a double-digit body count, and the entire local population was eager to cooperate.

He still can’t decide what to do next, not even after he comes back to Big Bird and starts walking towards the cockpit, heavy head and heavy legs. The decision here, he knows, is way beyond his paycheck. Raven is the captain, and she has the last word on strategy. Given how they’ve been for the past week, he isn’t even sure if she’ll want his input. But all this doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a mind of his own, or that he’ll blindly do whatever she or Kane say. If Kane wanted someone to follow him mindlessly, he should’ve hired a sheep.

“Another stake-out tomorrow?” he asks wearily as he enters the cockpit and removes his earpiece. Raven shakes her head.

“Only if we can’t figure out who to go to if we want to score some weed?”

Bellamy scoffs.

“One, Green is probably not selling anymore. Two, it’d be hilariously suspicious if we went asking around for that, and you know it.”

Unless he asks his sister to be the go-between, because it’s a given that she still has contacts. Oh well. He will if he gets some proof that this case is legit. If the bounty hunt is shady, he doesn’t want his sister anywhere near it.

He’s focused on meticulously folding together the wires that had been tucked under his shirt, determined not to look at Raven for as long as he can. Now that it’s just the two of them again, back comes the awkwardness, soulmates or no soulmates, and why does he even care? He’s here on a mission, and he should focus just on that. Or on trying to figure out why Kane is willing to pay money for bringing a tiny group of minor weed-growers to a high-security prison.

When he can’t drag it out anymore, his avoidance getting almost as awkward as the tension between them, he looks up, and catches her with something akin to a puzzled expression. That in itself is kind of a shock: Raven Reyes, unsure. He didn’t think that ever happened.

Now would be a good time to tell her all about his case-related suspicions, but, well. That would require the kind of trust they don’t currently have.


	4. I'll eat my brace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it goes! I'll see you again on Wednesday. Hopefully all will go according to plan.

Raven spends half the night on the comms, trying to get Kane to pick up for once, then failing miserably. Well, if anything confirms it for her that there is something fishy about this job, it’s the radio silence. She remembers Kane going silent exactly twice since she started flying for him, and neither of those times ended particularly well for anyone involved.

Is that why he insisted on her having Bellamy on board? Is he some kind of a spy, making sure she does her job, or else…?

Great. That’s just fucking great.

So she sneaks out at the ass-crack of dawn, and finds an old contact, someone she knows her mother used to go to whenever Nygel decided to play with her food. It’s a quick conversation, she’s on a pit stop and would like a little something, except not really, _damn, you caught me. There is this guy_ , she says, _and he owes me big. I wanna get his ass before Mount Weather does._

That gets her some info straight away, and she comes back to Big Bird clutching a piece of paper like it was a lifeline, still not sure what to do about it. When she walks in, Bellamy is already awake, preparing breakfast for two in the kitchen, and that gives her an unexpected pang of guilt. If she’s his captain on this mission, and technically she can do whatever the fuck she wants, does this still count as going behind his back?

“You took up jogging?” he asks dryly when she joins him. His bed is already made, all neat as if he was going to leave today, and she realizes he does this every single morning, then sets up his bed all over again in the evening. Why would he do that?

And why would she even care?

“I got a location,” she says in a calm voice, look at how well she’s pretending that this doesn’t move her. “Get ready. I want to be there within an hour.”

If he has any doubts about her loyalties, none of it shows on his face. Anyway, it’s hard to tell what kind of doubts he would have, when she doesn’t quite know herself what she’s going to do. Those three escaped from Mount fucking Weather, and that in itself makes them dangerous, no matter how harmless Monty Green sounds in local gossip. He might even have done some shit that didn’t make it to the gossip. 

Maybe, she decides, she just needs to see for herself.

The location she got is a small, mousy apartment hidden in a huge, equally mousy building, not unlike the one Raven herself grew up in. It’s hell to stake out with just two people, and she has a fleeting if begrudging thought that Kane was right about her not going solo this one time, damn him. That’s what pissed her off so much at the start. She knew she couldn’t manage it single-handedly, so why the hell did he insist she takes it? A loyalty test? She’ll definitely ask for an explanation or five as soon as she’s back in the hub.

For now, Bellamy follows her quietly, his new clothes making him almost invisible despite his height. It’s her who would attract more attention, what with her flashy pilot gear, if only the Arkers gave enough of a shit about anything so early in the morning. Oh well. Good for her.

It seems logical to trust him to circle the building, since he is so unassuming, and get back to her with intel. Here, see? She’s being a good little puppet. Nothing here to report to Kane, and if Bellamy does anything at all to jeopardize her, she isn’t above leaving him stranded on this goddamned planet, soulmate or not. 

(He can’t be, she decides as she waits for him to return. He can’t be. He would’ve said something, or at least shown some surprise when she first spoke to him. Besides, she should know better by now. There is no such thing as the one person in the whole wide universe, destined to love her.)

“Just one exit,” he confirms as if they didn’t know this from the start. “Would be one hell of a lot easier if we had actual mugshots.”

It sounds like he’s hinting at something, but Raven has no clue what that would be. Does he think she has some info she didn’t share? What is she, stupid? If only she had them, not showing him mugshots at this point would be asking for a failure.

“I guess it’s good old breaking and entering,” she snaps back, and he immediately takes position behind her, all soft and smooth, like they are some well-oiled machine.

So he is competent. Of course he is. No need to get mushy about it.

The capture itself is a hot mess: a tall guy charges at them seconds after Bellamy kicks in the door, and marks him as the bigger threat, stupidly ignoring Raven. A few minutes later, she has a shorter guy and a girl on gun point, and Bellamy is holding his guy down on the floor, strong and steady despite a bloody stain on his shoulder.

It just take a minute to confirm their identities. Raven flashes a bounty hunter badge, and after that, she is legally allowed to obtain blood samples from them to confirm their identities on a handheld computer. Monty Green, Nathan Miller, Harper MacIntyre, check, check, check, no mugshots needed in the end. Piece of cake.

Technically it doesn’t matter if they’re recognized now, but Bellamy still turns to back street and less populated areas, casually leading handcuffed Miller in front of him. Raven doesn’t question it, even though theoretically he should’ve asked her permission first. This is what she would’ve done. It’s bad enough for those people that they got arrested. Whatever they did, she doesn’t want to parade them across the settlement, for everyone to gawk and point.

“You need to get that arm checked out, soldier,” she says casually, and he looks back at her, as if surprised that she’d care.

“I’m fine. It’s a shallow cut. Fell into a metal bucket like an idiot.”

Well, he still has blood blooming dramatically on his sleeve, so much for a new shirt, so Raven scoffs a bit.

“Just get it done, will you? You’re attracting predators or something.”

“Aye, captain.”

Completing a mission like this always feels a bit underwhelming: a week of travel and two days of prep, all for a short walk between someone’s trash cans and more doubts than Raven cares for. At least in most missions she can console herself with the satisfaction of a job well done, but here, she knows that something isn’t right, and that just underlines how tired she always gets when it’s time to key in the hub’s coordinates into Big Bird’s navigation system again.

She gets a bit lost in those thoughts, and once they board her ship, she lets her guard down, and sinks into familiarity of motions: opening doors and resetting alarms, buttons and levers she knows by heart, so much so that they help her postpone the inevitability of having to make a decision about this whole mess.

So when Bellamy suddenly changes trajectory and leads the fugitives to the mess room instead of the brig, she is so taken aback she doesn’t know what to do at first. Then she shifts her wrist by a fraction of an inch, and points her gun at Bellamy instead of Green.

“What the…”

He looks shockingly unthreatening despite his size, but there is something in his face and in how he holds his hands up that tells Raven he is absolutely determined.

“I’m not locking them up until I know what they were in for in the first place,” he says calmly.

There is a moment of silence; of her looking at him, and him looking at her, frozen and focused as they take measure of each other. It’s not like Raven disagrees with what he is doing. She just never expected he would do it first, without her strong-arming him or going behind his back. What if it’s a trap? An elaborate scheme between him and Kane, aimed to test her and measure her loyalty? This guy cleans up his bed every morning as if he didn’t expect to sleep in it again. Is this because he doesn’t want to get too settled, knowing that he’s a mole? Do people even come up with such convoluted subterfuges, or is it just her mistrustful brain playing tricks on her, and making her see things that aren’t there?

What tips the scales is that he stays still. Doesn’t plead, or explain, or play mind games with her. He just stays, motionless and steady, until she lowers her gun, and waves towards the mess room.

“Alright then. Let’s hear the story.”

Their fugitives are openly staring at them right now, not that Raven can blame them. The fact that they didn’t use that stand-off to knock them out and run away speaks volumes about what kind of criminal masterminds they actually are. Raven still keeps her gun at hand, realizing belatedly that Bellamy doesn’t have one, never had it, and never asked for it. He just went on a mission to catch three potentially deadly criminals completely unarmed. What the hell is wrong with him?

But there is no time to ask. They march Green, Miller and MacIntyre into the mess room, then Bellamy casually plops on one of the chairs as if his fight with Miller didn’t leave him with a fresh bruise on his cheek and a blood-soaked sleeve. He sure gets some points for dramatic timing here.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” he says calmly, as if discussing the weather. “How did you three geniuses get into Mount Weather for growing pot?”

There is a moment of silence, and Raven only notices Nathan Miller’s angry expression a split second before he speaks, voice full of mockery.

“Who’s asking? You or your wife?” he spits out, and Bellamy freezes in his chair, makes a move like he wants the words to stop coming, except he can’t. Of course he can’t. “Cut the crap. Go call the governor, tell her you’ve got us. I’m sure the Griffins will take you back after that.”

The whole tirade makes absolutely no sense to Raven, but it clearly means something to Bellamy, and to the other two fugitives as well. Governor Griffin is in charge of Ark, the closest to what they have for royalty, and just the idea that Bellamy could be in her pocket fills Raven with dread. Kane might be a piece of work, and someone she doesn’t cross without thinking twice, but people who cross his ex-wife have an eerie tendency to disappear. And what was that thing about Bellamy’s wife?

Nevermind. She can think about it later. Now she has a fire to put down.

“Quiet,” she snaps, cutting Miller and Green short. “You three, to the cell. Cool down and consider your options. You,” she says, gesturing at Bellamy. “Go get that shoulder fixed. I’ll find you.”

And hopefully she’ll have some sort of an idea about what the hell is going in by then.

It’s not that hard to shuffle three handcuffed people into a cell when you have a gun and they fully believe you’d use it, but the ease with which they give in to her just confirms her belief that something is wrong here, and something big to boot. Why are they so convinced that the governor is out to get them? Why would Kane get involved, when usually he avoids anything that has to do with the Griffins? And what is Bellamy’s role in all this?

She is prepared to ask him all these as soon as she finds him, but when she does, words suddenly die in her throat. He is in a small supply room, right where she keeps her medical gear. Naked from the waist up, he is stretching out his arm to clean the cut with some alcohol-soaked gauze, and he is so focused on the task he probably doesn’t realize that his normally covered right forearm is right there, in Raven’s full view, displaying his soulmate tattoo.

_I’ll eat my brace before I let some dick board my ship, you hear me?_


	5. A plan that isn't stupid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's the deal: I'm going away on vacation tomorrow, and I'm not bringing my computer with me. The next chapter is written, but I'll have no comfortable way of posting it over the weekend. So I'll see you guys next week, hopefully after I've had some peace and quiet to revise what I've written, and write some more! For now, please enjoy a little confrontation.

The dramatic part of him wants to say that the moment he realizes Raven is staring at his arm, the world stops spinning. The truth, as per usual, is less glamorous. For one stupid, stupid moment he wants to reach out, and gently roll up Raven’s right sleeve, the way he would if they were in some tacky romance novel, but he checks himself quickly. They have other things to talk about. He doesn’t even believe in this whole soulmate spiel, so why would he react so strongly to seeing in her expression that their tattoos match after all?

(Because she was more interested in getting to the truth with him than in simply delivering her cargo and cashing in the reward. No one ever trusted him like that.)

“I’m not reporting to the Griffins,” he says quietly, focusing on what’s urgent, what’s important. He can’t have her thinking that he’s still somehow a part of that family. “Haven’t spoken to either of them in three years.”

Except Raven has no time for his sob story.

“What the hell is this?” she asks, grabbing his forearm so hard she’s probably leaving finger-shaped bruises. “You… A week. You’ve been here a week and you didn’t say a fucking word.”

“Neither did you,” he points out without thinking. Bad move. A no good, very bad move. She looks like he slapped her; then, for a split second, like she’s about to slap him. Finally, she lets go of his arm, a look of inexplicable betrayal setting on her face.

“You have a wife?” she asks like it’s an accusation. 

“ _Had_ a wife. Clarke Griffin. Like I said, I haven’t spoken to her in three years.” And Raven is clearly putting two and two together, so much for his precious anonymity. How did that Miller guy even recognize him? He looks nothing like he did before. “Come on. You know I don’t have comms with anyone here. Your firewalls are perfect. I know because I tried to send a message to my sister on the first night.”

It’s probably an ill-timed confession, since he didn’t exactly take the time to tell Raven he has a sister, but, well. He already showed off his tattoo and admitted to being the ex-husband of a Griffin. How much worse can things get for him?

It looks like Raven is considering this very question herself, and for the first time in ages, Bellamy actually feels cold sweat roll down his back. She could just lock him up in a cell now, and float him as soon as she hits outer space. And he can’t even fight her, because if he wins, what is he going to do with a spaceship that will never listen to him, and three fugitives in the brig? It would be a lot better if he can convince her, but ironically words just won’t come to him now. All he can do is stare, with his arm still bared to her.

In the end, it’s Raven who breaks the silence.

“Right. So what about our fugitives?” she asks in a tense voice, avoiding eye contact. Talk about anticlimactic.

He shakes his head.

“I’m not handing them over,” he says quietly. “At worst, they should be doing community service, not high security prison. Something is very wrong here.”

It’s the first time they’re actually speaking about what they think about the mission, and Bellamy doesn’t know what to expect, but he’s dead sure that a nod wasn’t among his top ten guesses.

“I’ll talk to them alone in the morning,” she says, voice still a little off, and there is nothing he can do about that. It’s clear enough that she doesn’t want him. “They think you’re a mole, they won’t tell you shit. Show up in the cockpit at seven. Want you keeping an eye on the ship.”

And then she just leaves him, presumably to start the engines and take off from Ark, because what else would they be waiting for on this goddamned wasteland? Bellamy doesn’t even dare to ask her to wait another hour, so he can drop by O’s and say goodbye. He’s too worried she’d leave him stranded, and he’d have to find his own way back to the hub.

(He’s too worried that she’d leave him stranded, and he’d never get to make this mess between them right.)

It feels strange to suddenly be confronted with the idea of his soulmate really being here, in this small metal shell, rushing through space together with him. How did he manage to find his soulmate, he of all people, when he didn’t spend a day in his life looking? Other people devote years to listening carefully to every word, clutching their forearms for dear life as they go from place to place, hoping to bump into this one right person. Bellamy? He just focused on climbing up in the army to give his family a better life, then met a girl at twenty three and married her a year later, didn’t hesitate once when her tattoo proved to be something he’d never have said. Even then, despite being so young, he knew exactly how little the whole soulmate thing was worth. Both he and O learned that very early on.

In the end, he just never expected to actually find his soulmate. It was easier that way. And he definitely didn’t expect her to be a genuinely decent human being, someone he’d want to get along with. Someone with a heart big enough that it makes him ashamed to think that when they part ways in a week, she’ll write him off as a scum.

All those messy thoughts make for one tense day, followed by restless night of tossing and turning, and trying to fit things together in his head, to not much avail. Does he even owe Raven an apology, when he didn’t owe her any loyalty in the first place?

When he shows up in the cockpit at seven o’clock sharp, Raven looks exactly as bad as he feels, and he suddenly wishes he could do something, anything to soothe her, even though he knows it would never be welcome, not coming from him. He still brings her some morning coffee, because it feels strange to only make one, and she deliberately leaves it untouched as she passes the controls on to him, which, probably fair. He is here for his skills, not for his bleeding heart. Big Bird can normally fly itself, but Ark is close to a cluster of planets, and that calls for some human eyes on the first day out. Raven needs him to do the job, but that doesn’t mean she wants to speak to him.

When she comes back, she brings him a story he wishes he hadn’t predicted from the bits and pieces Miller shouted out at him the previous day. Three musketeers here had some half-baked, home-grown resistance against the governor. Social tension on the planet ran so high that they actually started to make a difference, so Abby Griffin took care of them the way she knew how.

“She didn’t do it often,” says Bellamy, his eyes still fixed on Big Bird’s flight controls. “Liked to look benevolent, you know? Especially in front of Clarke. So what are we gonna do? Are we giving up our wages for this one and helping them escape, or delivering three people to the authorities so they can serve life in high security for a pile of leaflets?”

Raven makes a noise like he’s stupid to ask, and only then does he relax his shoulders a little, yes, good, he can do this. He even has an idea all of a sudden, and it’s perfect for all parties involved. She can scapegoat him for all he cares. Let all this mess finally go to hell.

“I’ll take them,” he offers, strangely calm, as if he just noticed they’re surrounded by the immense silence of space. Grateful that his mind finally has something solid to latch itself onto. “You just need to tell Kane I stabbed you in the back and left with them for some reason. He’ll assume I did it to spite Clarke. Win-win.”

She looks at him like he grew an extra head.

“You know what? Just, go away,” she orders gruffly, and nudges him away from the controls. “Find yourself something to do, anywhere but here in the cockpit. Run some diagnostics, do your workout, whatever. I need a minute. Gotta come up with a plan that isn’t stupid.”


	6. Criminal masterminds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back from my vacation, I slept it off, and now I'm ready for action :D. So, here comes your new chapter, and I'm sitting down to keep writing. I have a nagging feeling that this story won't be done in 9 chapters, but I'll need at least 10, but let's see how it goes. I hope you enjoy this one!

Here is what Nathan Miller tells her when she finally parks her ass in front of his cell: bounty hunter Bellamy Blake was married to Ark prodigy Clarke Griffin for four long years, and smiled beautifully in the family photos together with the rotten rest of them until at some point he simply dropped off the face of the planet, and was never heard of again. Fancy that.

Still, she tries not to linger on what Miller says. It’s fair to swap story for story, and anyway, they are here for a reason, not just to give Raven snippets of her wayward soulmate’s backstory. So instead of fixating on Bellamy, Raven tells her prisoners what she knows. She tells them about Kane’s vague specs, and the intel that came up on Ark, about how easy they were to find, and how little she believes that they’re some hardened criminal masterminds. By the end of her story, she puts them at enough of an ease for them to tell her what they were really in for, and the truth is as chilling as it is predictable. They wanted change, and they didn’t believe it would happen, so they started organizing to pick a different governor next time, and not let Abby Griffin run unopposed. There were whispers and leaflets, and talk of a rally, but before they could gather for the first time, Monty Green’s little greenhouse which he was using to make a little bit extra cash on the side got raided just when the other two were visiting him for an evening. Neither Miller nor MacIntyre ever grew as much as a twig, but they got drug charges all three of them, and got shipped off to Mount Weather before they could as much as try giving their supporters a shout-out.

The story gets shaky when Miller gets to how they got out of Mount Weather, and judging by the faces the other two make, they definitely had some help, and whoever it was, they don’t want to get them in trouble. Fair enough, decides Raven as she listens. She wouldn’t exactly go around spilling her life stories to a bounty hunter either.

So she has her head full by the time she comes back to the cockpit, and then Bellamy’s idiotic idea only ads to her confusion. What’s worse, it makes her look at him; makes her notice his face in detail, stubborn eyes and a sea of freckles. That’s no good. She can’t go around watching him like a hawk, focusing and registering every tiny thing. He made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want her, and anyway, she should know better, right? She should know better, and yet it still stings; the single person in the whole wide universe destined to love her, and he didn’t even bother to search for her, not once. Didn’t even made a sound when he heard her say his words. When she was out there, discovering the world and getting shot, and having her heart broken over and over again, he was on Ark, making himself a nice and cushy life, and marrying Clarke fucking Griffin of all people. He must still love her, she decides while trying her best not to think about him. Of course he does. This is just how things go for her. Third time’s the charm, right? 

Despite the whole whirlwind happening in her head, she comes up with as good a plan as she can. It’s not a stroke of genius, not by a long shot, but it will do the job just as well, if only her three Ark heroes can act like reasonable human beings, and not rush back home at the first opportunity. Raven knows a settlement not far off their track, and the ruler there is scary enough for Kane not to poke his nose there, but familiar enough that he owes Raven a favor or three. All she needs to do is some brainstorming, and one convincing accident.

“I can’t just drop them off,” she tells Bellamy an hour later, over lunch in the mess room. Just a glance sideways is enough to tell her that his bed is all cleaned up yet again, and it annoys her much more than it rightfully should.

“Big Bird logs all coordinates?” he asks between bites. Raven nods.

“And sends them straight to the hub. All Kane’s ships do that. He says they don’t. He’s lying.”

Bellamy nods.

“So we need them to stage a dramatic breakout?”

Well, Raven herself wouldn’t have said it better.

The next few days are full of planning and talking, ideas thrown back and forth until a plan emerges. Each and every day feels like a special kind of hell, as if everything was brought into focus. On their way to the Ark, she had the luxury of just barking orders and keeping to herself, not much cooperation needed. Then, as they were planning the capture, enough was happening to keep her distracted. Now everything seems exposed and obvious, and Raven has a strange feeling like the other shoe dropped the moment she saw Bellamy’s tattoo. It’s just the two of them poring over plans and blueprints, and Big Bird is suddenly so tiny it threatens to choke Raven every time Bellamy leans towards her or speaks in this quiet, level voice of his. He was hard enough to ignore when she was telling herself he was a piece of scum, but now she is confronted with a quick mind, and an overwhelming sense of decency that almost startles her every time it makes an appearance. This, here, is her soulmate; bright, efficient, and just.

Too bad he doesn’t want anything to do with her.

It takes one day of fiddling with Bellamy’s faithful tablet until Raven can turn it into a hotspot, and send a message to Lincoln calling in her favor. Then there is an escape pod to set up, and they work on it together, making sure it can survive a drop until Lincoln can pick it up on his ship, and carry it to the settlement. All through that work, Bellamy watches her like a hawk, and she just wishes she didn’t notice, wishes he wouldn’t, wishes they would… 

She just wants to be in the hub already, so, logically, they finish the pod a day before the planned showdown. The prisoners are still in their cells, a precaution Raven thinks prudent to keep. If Big Bird can alert her to anyone breaking out of the brig, then reason dictates it can also alert Kane. What that means to her is one more night spent alone in her cockpit, too tired to pilot manually, but too wired to sleep. Bellamy, she is sure, is working out in the mess room, not a care in the world, and she just needs to get over it. Four more days, and they’ll be back in the hub, parting ways and maybe commiserating over how no one pays you when your prisoners get away, tough luck. After that, she expects to never see him again.

What she also expects: an evening all alone in her cockpit. So she almost jumps when she hears steps, shoddy military shoes thumping against a metal pathway, what do you know? She recognizes his steps already.

“What happened?” she asks in a hoarse voice, all out of disuse, she tells herself. She hasn’t spoken to anyone most of the day.

“All fine.” Bellamy emerges from the doorway quite slowly, as if balancing something in his hands. Then a mug full of coffee lands right in front of Raven, and she hears him settle with another one in the co-pilot’s seat, eyes fixed in the distance as if he, too, came here to be alone. “I just… Figured I should explain a few things. We’ve got a whole herd of elephants in the room, don’t we? You deserve some answers.”

What she should do: tell him to get lost. Just gather up all her strength, and kick him out of her cockpit, out of sight and out of mind, she is better than this. Better than being tempted by soft movements and a soft voice, better than letting him lure her in with smooth phrases. Better than hoping for this stranger to love her, when she doesn’t even love him. She doesn’t need to love him. But she was promised, once upon a time, a person who’d love her no matter what. So she scoffs.

“What, because I’m your soulmate?” she snaps against her own better judgement.

Bellamy shakes his head.

“No. Because I want to tell you.”

And just like that, she is hooked.


	7. Coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And back to regularly scheduled programming :). I managed to write chapter 8 last night, and I'm hoping I can finish chapter 9 by the end of the weekend. If it all works out, we'll be finishing this journey next week!

It’s not like he knows exactly what he’s going to say.

The days after they leave Ark pass in a strange haze of work and tension, and some new flavor of hostility he feels from Raven. It’s not that he wronged her, exactly; more like he didn’t measure up, didn’t turn out to be who she hoped for. Funny how those things go.

So when he comes up with the idea to talk to her, it starts simply as a trick to put his guilt at ease, whatever it is she’s accusing him of. Only when he starts building it up in his head as something he anticipates does he realize that he’s looking forward to the conversation for other reasons as well. Maybe it’s been too long. Maybe he needs to talk to someone, come clean and let his words sink in space between here and there. It’s not like she’ll ever want to see him again.

Only when he comes up to the cockpit with two mugs of coffee does he realize that he was so focused on imagining how it would feel that he didn’t really consider how much he wanted to say. So, once he’s settled and sure, his two feet planted firmly on the ground in front of his seat, he starts with a question.

“How much did Miller tell you?”

Raven is still a little bit curled up, eyes fixed in the distance, as if determined to not look at him. Not to see too much, in case she’d get attached.

“The basics,” she says dryly. “Your wife, and the lot of them. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection. I mean, I knew she had some military eyecandy of a husband, but… I was off the planet at the time. Didn’t pay attention.”

Bellamy can’t help a smile at that. Funny. She is funny. He’s going to miss working with someone this quick-minded.

“I don’t really look…” He pauses, looks at his hands as if to assure himself, all callouses and engine grease, yes. Yes, this is still him. “I looked a bit different back then. I think I might’ve known Miller in passing, that’s why he recognized me. It just didn’t click when I saw him at first, but when I mulled over it… There was an old guard in the palace named Miller. He had a kid a few years younger than me, I remember seeing him a few times. I think that was him.”

“Fancy that,” mutters Raven in a voice that makes him want to reach out a bit, touch her arm, anything. It’s been a long few days, he realizes. It’s so exhausting to work hand in hand with someone, but go out of your way to make sure you don’t touch them even by accident. “So what? You got bored of being rich and pretty?”

“A tacky old story, really. Girl meets boy. Girl marries boy. They go to live together in luxury. Girl finds soulmate. Girl divorces boy’s ass on fast track within two weeks, to never be seen again.”

That, finally, seems to get Raven’s attention. Or at least it makes her look at him.

“How long were you married?”

That’s not the question he expected from her, but it’s not like there is any harm in him answering.

“Four years.”

“And she just divorced you?”

Bellamy snorts, then waves his covered forearm at her.

“You know how those soulmates are.”

That earns him a disgruntled noise, like she is, all of a sudden, angry on his behalf, and that’s not fair. Not fair to her, maybe even not fair to Clarke. He doesn’t get to twist this story just to make himself sound more dramatic.

“No, it wasn’t like that,” he admits before she can say anything. “I’m being a dick. We were very happy at the beginning. Then less so. The last two years… There wasn’t really much there to fight for anymore.”

Here, better. A lot closer to the truth, and really, it’s his flaw of character that he’s still butthurt she didn’t bother fighting anyway. 

“So why did you stay with her? Why stay for another two years?” insist Raven, as if getting to the bottom of how his life went wrong were to help her solve some kind of puzzle about herself. Who knows? Maybe it is.

“We were married,” he says with a shrug. Come on. This one is a no-brainer. You don’t divorce someone just because you got bored. You stick around, and try to make things better.

Still, maybe a less pretentious explanation is also in order.

“It was one of those strict marriages,” he says after a beat. “You know? Full ceremony, difficult divorce, all that jazz no one reasonable can afford in the settlements. But Clarke could, and we did.”

“She made you have the strict ceremony, then divorced you in two weeks? Fucking Griffins.”

“Oh no. The strict thing was my idea.”

“Your idea?” she spits out, and no, he isn’t making things up, she looks like he hurt her again. So he reaches out, and gently touches her arm.

She looks absolutely baffled at that, and to be fair, he can’t blame her. There are two types of marriage on Ark, simple and strict, the former more popular with the poor, the latter still held up by the romantic types and most of the rich. The simple one is just a promise and a signature, and when you want to break it off, all it takes is signing a few papers and waiting for a month or two. But for the strict, there is a whole ceremony, all high ranking officials and pomp, and when you want a divorce after that, it can take years of negotiating and convincing. Unless one of the spouses finds their soulmate. When that happens, all bets are off, fast track for all, no matter what kind of marriage you had. It’s considered inhumane on Ark to make anyone live with someone who isn’t their soulmate, when the soulmate is right there, within reach.

“I never thought… Look, I knew some soulmate couples there. It doesn’t mean shit. There was cheating, fighting, abuse, you name it. It didn’t make them better at all, just because they were soulmates. So I never looked. I thought it was a huge hoax, and maybe I was right, because look at us. You hate my guts, and we can’t even talk this thing out straight. I didn’t…”

But she interrupts him, her voice suddenly quiet. Small.

“I don’t hate your guts.”

There is a silence after that, and Bellamy isn’t sure what to do with it, how to give comfort when he thought his comfort would never be needed. It’s not because she is his soulmate, he realizes. It’s because she’s here and in pain, and she hasn’t pushed his hand away.

“I don’t hate you,” she repeats angrily, then looks up at him like she is ready for a fight. “It’s the fucking words, I thought… It’s been haunting me my whole life. I thought you’d be some drunk I met in a bar, and it will be the same story all over again, and I’ll waste my life having to drag you away from the booze, like with my mom. Except you aren’t like that, are you? That’s just my luck. You’re actually decent, so of course you don’t… Forget it. I need a moment.”

And with that, she rushes out, leaving him to mind Big Bird all on his own, brilliant. What did he say that was so wrong? And why does he even care?

Unfortunately it turns out that Raven set up Big Bird in a way that doesn’t really take much piloting, or any work, really, so Bellamy is left all alone with his thoughts and nothing to distract him, forced to confront them now that he opened his mouth. Does it matter that she’s his soulmate? No, not really. Not to him. Does it matter that she’s brilliant and impressive, and he hates the thought that he hurt her somehow? Yes. Yes, this does matter a great deal.

He still takes good fifteen minutes to make sure that everything is set up until the morning, and they won’t end up crashing into anything during the night. Then he has no excuse to stay. He probably shouldn’t stay. This is Raven’s space, and he doesn’t want to take it away. He caused enough trouble as it is.

He doesn’t expect to find her in the mess room when he goes down there, but then, why wouldn’t she? He’s only been sleeping here for some days, and his bed isn’t even made for the night. By day, this is still her dining room and kitchen. Of course she came straight here.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he sees her, stops abruptly in the doorway, as if waiting to be invited. “That wasn’t fair. You’ve been decent to me ever since I got here. You weren’t exactly warm, but you were decent through and through, and I didn’t give you any reasons to trust me.”

There is silence after that, Raven squirming uncomfortably in front of the sink, him waiting at the door like an idiot, and it’s too much. She got angry on his behalf, he remembers suddenly. He told her about Clarke, and her instinct was to get angry on his behalf. He can’t leave without thanking her for it in some way, no matter how hard it is to speak all of a sudden. He has to make an effort.

But before he can make himself break the silence, Raven does it for him.

“I’m making more coffee,” she says, even though there is no kettle to be seen anywhere around the stove. “You want some?”

Yes, he does. He very much does.


	8. A moment of peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally managed to finish the whole story, and since it's all done and reviewed, it feels like there is no point in waiting with posting the further chapters, especially because the last 3 chapters are kind of on the short side. So please enjoy the completed story -- while it lasts!
> 
> I will be deleting this story off AO3 at the end of July, because I have it in my mind to do something with it. Wish me luck!

If he expects any more grand confessions, he’s in for a disappointment, not that Raven can guess what he’s thinking or feeling simply by looking at his face. The rest of the evening turns out to be mostly silence, and Bellamy seems to just blend seamlessly with the small sanctuary that is Raven’s ship. They talk coordinates and locks, and details of the fight they need to stage together tomorrow for the brig camera to catch; you’d think they didn’t just have a draining heart-to-heart despite being virtual strangers.

“Just stay in the cockpit and let me do it,” says Bellamy quietly, fingers fidgeting with his half-empty mug of coffee. “It looks more believable if there is just one of us, and I never carry a gun. If it’s you, Kane will question why you didn’t shoot at least one of them. With me… I’ll just get another lecture on how I should finally start carrying a gun again, which I’ll ignore, again.”

He has a point, of course he does. And yet Raven still doesn’t like the thought of that fight getting physical, doesn’t like to imagine fresh bruises blooming under Bellamy’s skin. This is none of her business, she tells herself as she agrees. He used to be Kane’s son-in-law. Nothing bad will happen to him if he fucks up one mission, and the same can’t be said about Raven.

She’s still pins and needles when he goes down to the brig with plates of food next day at lunchtime, and fumbles with the key in a show of clumsiness as he locks the cell afterwards, giving Miller the agreed-upon sign.

It’s a quick fight, and Big Bird’s alarms start blaring at some point, but Raven is sitting in her pilot seat and rubbing knots out of her leg, the brace set against the cockpit wall. She rushes to put it back on very theatrically, but by the time she can run towards the brig, everything is over. Bellamy is stumbling towards the mess room half-conscious, cursing like a sailor, and the freshly fixed escape pod is long gone, dropping gently towards where Lincoln can catch it. Kane doesn’t need to know that last part.

“You okay?” she asks, trying to look confused and concerned. Big Bird definitely doesn’t record audio, but the security tape they’re creating right now is quite stunning if she says so herself.

“Yeah, but that kid needs an acting class,” Bellamy hisses out, hand going to the back of his head. “Fuck, he almost knocked me out for real.”

From what she saw on the security footage while putting on the brace, he also got a good kick on the ribs and a few solid punches here and there, but apparently we’re not mentioning those. Did she stay at the screen for extra thirty seconds and waste precious time just to see if he was okay? If she did, Bellamy doesn’t need to know that last part.

There is no time to fuss over him, or wonder why she suddenly wants to. Instead, she watches, a bit mesmerized, as Bellamy hijacks her comms, and calls Kane himself, before Raven has time to tell him that he won’t pick up, hasn’t since the beginning of this mission. Then she does say that and more, but Bellamy still makes all of four failed attempts before he gives up, and slumps on the co-pilot seat, defeated.

“The missed calls register,” he says, and goes back to pawing the back of his head. “Sorry, I had to do that. It would be suspicious if I didn’t try. Do you have an ice pack?”

Why yes. Yes she does.

It feels strange, real and staged at the same time, adrenaline buzzing in Raven’s veins even though she knows that everything that happened was one big ruse. Even Bellamy’s injuries are superficial, maybe even fake, the fuss he makes entirely for the cameras’ benefit. But she still can’t shake the eerie tension that has her in its grip as she walks to the mess room to get the ice pack, then returns and pushes Bellamy’s fingers away to examine the bump on his skull. Real enough.

“Why is it that you don’t carry a gun, anyway?” she snaps, then immediately feels silly. She didn’t mean to get angry, not again, but she can’t help it. Not with the way he sets her on edge, and makes her conscious of every tiny movement she makes.

“Because it doesn’t say in the rules that I have to.”

It’s the most infuriating non-answer he could give, and it makes Raven want to push him, but then he reaches up to hold the ice pack for himself, and she gets suddenly distracted by his hands, so big and worn, nothing like what she’d expect of Clarke Griffin’s husband. They’re the hands of someone who works, and works hard; the kind of hands she saw all the time in her settlement on Ark.

Then out of nowhere one of those hands comes to rest on her forearm like this is some goddamned signature move of his, and when he speaks, his voice sounds soft. Like he is trying to make peace with her.

“I don’t like to carry it. Makes me feel like people are flinching from me. Shh, don’t be mad. Sorry, I should’ve just answered straight. Sit with me, okay? I’m dizzy.”

Right. She only sits with him because he’s dizzy.

It feels like something should happen now, a fight or maybe a kiss, though she isn’t even sure why they of all people would even kiss. It’s not like Bellamy owes her anything, and she doesn’t exactly care, either – doesn’t care or at least shouldn’t care, not about his hands, or his voice, or the bump on his head. Why would she care if he’s going to leave in as little as three days? 

But it still feels like they’re overdue _something_ after that conversation yesterday. There should’ve been more drama, she decides, something more significant than a short series of confessions that sizzled out to become yet another session of strategy-making. He’s her soulmate, and she’ll only have him for three more days. This whole thing can’t just fade to black gently as if it never was. Raven might not expect much anymore, but she knows she’s worth more than that.

“My boyfriend shot me,” she blurts out the first thing that keeps nagging somewhere at the back of her head. “Sided with the criminals we were tracking and shot me in the back. That’s why I wear the brace. How does that happen? How did your tattoo know all this since you were born?”

It makes sense, doesn’t it? If she believes in soulmates and destiny, she has to believe that the brace was destined to her as well. But Bellamy doesn’t believe in all this, that much was clear from what he said yesterday, so how does he explain her brace?

“It’s a tattoo,” he says impulsively, and twists his body to face her, look her right in the eye. “It doesn’t know shit. Look, I don’t know how it happens, but I know there could’ve been so many different scenarios. A broken leg. A sport injury. For the longest time, I thought it must be the kind of braces you wear on your teeth, because why the fuck would anyone threaten to eat a brace? It just makes no sense. I’m a few years older than you, so how did the tattoo even know that you’d be born?”

Well, the last one, at least, is a good question, even if she has no idea what to do with it. She is about as prepared to let go of believing in soulmates as he is to let go of his scepticism. So here is where this leaves them: sitting side by side, shoulders touching warmly as they rush through space, having possibly committed a political crime together. Go figure.

“What are you going to do when we land in the hub?” she asks in a slightly choked voice.

“No idea. Whatever Kane tells me to do.”

“You always do what Kane tells you to do?”

A shrug.

“We don’t all have cozy spaceships to keep us company.”

It’s an impulse, and ill-timed to boot, but she only has three days left with him, and she can’t not know how it all feels. This is her soulmate, and if he doesn’t want her, that’s fair enough. But she has to at least try.

What she doesn’t expect: that he will kiss her back.

It’s long, long and awkwardly sloppy, like they know that they’ll have to talk about it as soon as they come up for a breath, so the easiest thing is to just… not. He is big, and warm, and solid against her, as if he wasn’t about to disappear in the matter of days, and when he leans to chase her for another kiss, he tastes hungry, hungry and shaky and lonely, his fingers unsteady on the small of her back. The ice pack hits the floor with a very dramatic thump, all forgotten, and Raven kisses so hard she almost climbs Bellamy’s lap, relishing in this short minute of being wanted. This, she knows, is how you need to kiss if you want to feel wanted; to feel hands climb reverently up the column of your back, and to get soft kisses trailed down your jawline, slow and very breathless.

Then she reaches to pull his shirt off over his head, and he asks the worst question possible.

“Are you sure?”

That’s not fair, she wants to tell him. Not fair that he questions her when she’s the only one trying to fill this awkward void between them, the only one trying to do something. Except her words get trapped in her throat as she realizes she isn’t being fair, either. He tried to talk to her, didn’t he? She just couldn’t bear to listen.

Now he waits for her answer some distance away from her, just a few inches that feel impossible to breach even if his lips are still kiss-swollen, his breath still shaky from her. For her. For all of two minutes, someone touched her like they really meant it, but now it’s all gone again, just because she can’t answer a simple question.

What she should’ve expected by now: he comes to her rescue. His hand is surprisingly steady when it comes up to cup her cheek, and he pulls a warm smile from fuck knows where.

“It’s okay,” he says quietly, as if careful not to spook her. “I don’t want to be here alone, either.”

It doesn’t solve all her problems, not by a long shot. It doesn’t even make her feel that much better. But when she leans forward and rests her forehead against his chest, it gives her the longest moment of peace she’s had in four years.


	9. Silence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally managed to finish the whole story, and since it's all done and reviewed, it feels like there is no point in waiting with posting the further chapters, especially because the last 3 chapters are kind of on the short side. So please enjoy the completed story -- while it lasts!
> 
> I will be deleting this story off AO3 at the end of July, because I have it in my mind to do something with it. Wish me luck!

His lips are still tingling when she lets go, and he can still feel her comforting weight against his shoulders, so warm and real he wants to pull her back in as soon as she straightens up. He doesn’t mind that they didn’t go any further, even if he was ready to go all the way after that first kiss; the air of reluctance he felt from her afterwards kind of killed the mood for sex. But he does regret the separation that follows their hug, finds himself, suddenly, lonely and cold. At this point, he doesn’t even care that he’s proving everyone sort of right by falling so quickly for his supposed soulmate. She’s brilliant, and warm, and kind. He’s not going to spite himself just to stick it to a goddamned tattoo.

Whether she’ll want him for more than just a night is another thing altogether. Will she even want him for a night?

“Do you need me to leave?” is what comes out of his mouth in the end, because he doesn’t quite have the guts to ask to stay. 

Clearly that’s the wrong question to ask, because as soon as Bellamy’s words sound out in the cockpit, Raven curls herself a bit smaller, and looks at him with this wounded expression she got the second she saw his tattoo. See? Even if they’re soulmates, he keeps falling short.

“Just do whatever you want,” she spits out, and so he doesn’t move a muscle. He has a feeling that if he leaves now, they will never speak to each other again.

The heavy silence that falls is still so much better than heading to the empty mess room and exercising until his mind is as numb as his limbs, so, stubbornly, he stays, taking care not to look too much at Raven, or try to guess what to do by reading her face. If he watches her too much, she might kick him out, and he’d do anything not to be alone now, in the vastness of space that surrounds them. It hits him with strange clarity that they’re almost insignificant like this, rushing through endlessness in a tiny shell of a ship, with their choices being the only thing differentiating them from random debris of metal and dust, and the only thing worse than experiencing this alone would be to experience it with a wrong person. So he makes one more effort.

“What did I say?” he asks after what feels like an hour. “You flinched from me. Must’ve been something I said.”

“It’s okay,” she says gruffly, fingers on Big Bird’s controls, eyes focused outside, no looking, no looking. Why wouldn’t she look at him?

“No, it’s not. Tell me. How do I know not to do it again if you don’t tell me?”

At that, she finally looks at him, and he realizes that what she’s been hiding is how obvious the tiredness is on her face.

“Don’t make me talk,” she pleads, still managing to sound a bit angry despite the exhaustion. “Just stop trying to make me talk.”

So he stays silent for the rest of the day, but since she never shows any sign that she wants him to go, he sticks close, quiet and determined to blend in until the silence becomes comfortable between them. Before dinner, he brushes his hand against hers when they set out their rations, and this time, it doesn’t feel electric. Instead, it seems calming and almost familiar, familiar enough that she runs her foot up and down his calf halfway through the meal, and he strokes her shoulders briefly when he passes her on his way to the sink. Maybe she was right? This is so much easier than talking.

So easy that when the time comes to go to sleep, and she pulls at his wrist when she gets up to go to her quarters, he follows her without a word.

There is no kiss that follows, no sharp gasps or shaky hands. They fall into bed clothes and all, like two creatures starved for comfort, with only a brief pause for Raven to take off her brace, and then they stay like that, her head on his shoulder and his hand on the small of her back, no words beyond “Scoot” or “Hold on”. If they don’t speak, Bellamy never has to put a name to how greedily he strokes Raven’s back, and nuzzles his nose against the crown of her head. She doesn’t even have to acknowledge how hard she clings to him in the darkness that renders all cameras useless, not that he thinks she has one installed in her private room. Even Kane’s grip doesn’t reach that far.

Morning comes way too soon, and Bellamy wakes up hazy and hungry, determined not to leave Raven’s bed until she tells him to, no volunteering this time. For once, he doesn’t feel lonely when he opens his eyes, and he hasn’t felt this not lonely for way longer than just three years.

The room isn’t completely dark anymore, Big Bird introducing soft light imitating dawn before it nudges them awake with some sort of an alarm, so Bellamy takes this opportunity to take in Raven’s features, and commit them to memory. She seems, suddenly, calmer; her jaw not set, her skin smoother and darker than in the merciless glare of cold, electric lights, and it makes him want to see her in actual sunlight, wrapped in crisp, white sheets or rolling in lush grass, not a care in the world. It would feel so damn good to see her have no single care in the world.

It’s with that thought that he dares to wake her with a gentle kiss on her cheek, then a few more down to her jaw, no further until she stirs, and wraps her arms around his shoulders, head tilted to give him access to her neck. Instead of words, they now have nods and soft gasps, Raven’s eyes wide open when Bellamy gets bold, and slides his fingers an inch under the hem of her shirt. Then there are frantic kisses and muffled cries, Raven’s jeans stubbornly tight when he tries to pull them off her legs, no matter, it’s fine. They’re fine. As long as they’re touching, they’re beyond fine.

When they finally get naked, she only pauses to push a small foil package into his hand, trusting him to roll the condom on when the time comes. Then she pulls him in close like she’s been waiting for this for years, wound up tight, and generous in her touch, hands on his face and on his back, closer, closer. She doesn’t need words to tell him to come closer. 

In no time at all, he’s deep inside her, a shiver of relief rolling down his back before he can as much as start moving, and once Raven wraps her healthy leg around his waist, it feels like there is no one but them in the whole wide universe. After that, the world shifts a little bit, and it becomes slightly graceless, what with sharp movements and sharp gasps, and a rushed finish on both starved ends.

If noon finds him with Raven’s legs over his shoulders as he drops to his knees in front of her pilot seat at the slightest encouragement, and hungrily presses his lips against her opening, he hopes no one will later question why they deleted random half an hour of cockpit camera footage.


	10. Not a good ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally managed to finish the whole story, and since it's all done and reviewed, it feels like there is no point in waiting with posting the further chapters, especially because the last 3 chapters are kind of on the short side. So please enjoy the completed story -- while it lasts!
> 
> I will be deleting this story off AO3 at the end of July, because I have it in my mind to do something with it. Wish me luck!

When they finally reach their hub, it feels like the world is suddenly coming to a screeching halt. Bellamy’s bundle of belongings is packed just like every morning, resting against the wall of the mess room, and his shoes make these funny thumping noises as he tidies up after himself, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. It’s not like he slept here for the past three nights, but apparently he is still finding things to clean, so obviously fidgety Raven has to smile. They’re both dreading their confrontation with Kane. Right. That’s why he’s pacing so nervously.

“Why don’t you let me see him on my own?” he asked last night, and she scoffed against his shoulder, nice try. There’s been a lot of scoffs between them since they let the fugitives go, a lot of nods, and hand waves, and raised eyebrows. At first, the world just seemed so much easier when they drowned it in silence, but now that they’re stepping off the ship with no bounty to show, Raven wishes she had some words to cling to, something coming from him and not from her own imagination. Will he miss her? Will he come back to spend one more night with her as Big Bird stops for restocking and refueling? Will he throw her under the bus the moment they step into Kane’s office?

“You need new shoes,” she tells him just to say something when they’re stepping off the ship, not ready to start talking now, with so many strangers bustling around them. Bellamy surprises her with a smile.

“I probably do,” he says, his expression a little bit sheepish, like he is somehow embarrassed by the state of his wardrobe. Or maybe that’s not it. Maybe he just likes his current look more than he cares to admit.

“Yeah, well. It’s not like we’re going to get a bonus,” she mutters, not wanting to press.

“Wouldn’t count on it, no.”

It feels strange to see him now, all straightened up and taller, his military training obvious in how he carries himself on solid ground. Just this morning, he was trailing kisses all the way down her stomach, touching her like she was the greatest wonder he’s seen in his life, and now, surrounded by people, he seems distant and strange, guarded against something only he can see around him.

Things become clearer once they step into Kane’s office, and Bellamy moves ever so slightly, taking up space and shielding Raven from Kane’s stare like they’re still on the mission, and he’s covering her flank while she takes care of his back. He makes his report in a voice that sounds almost nonchalant, sure to make Kane’s blood boil, and he is poised as if to take all the potential backlash on himself. They repaired a spare pod because there was time to kill on board, and they thought they were doing the fleet a favor. They couldn’t have known, couldn’t have expected that someone could be so stupid to run away into open space. The prisoners are probably dead by now. What a shame.

“Well then. There is nothing you could’ve done,” says Kane with a fake sigh, startling Raven into moving forward, just to see him closer. “Obviously I saw the report you sent in when you landed. Very unfortunate. I’ll need to call governor Griffin and refund her money. Is there anything else you wanted from me? If not, then I just need a moment with Raven.”

She could swear Bellamy actually clicks his shoes on the way out, and this is it, her soulmate gone without her saying as much as goodbye, both of them too busy getting angry with the realization that their whole mission was a setup to begin with. Kane never meant to let them bring the fugitives in. He wanted them to be lost somewhere in space, just pawns in the power game he plays with his ex-wife, and Raven and Bellamy were means to an end, reliably decent and just rebellious enough to do the right thing regardless of consequences. Now Kane is giving Raven the pay-off, badly disguised as ‘ship maintenance money’, and she doesn’t even know if she wants to strangle him because he didn’t just tell her the whole plan before she left for Ark, or because he’s keeping her in his office now, not letting her watch obsessively as Bellamy’s back disappears in the crowd never to appear in her life again.

What she doesn’t dare to expect: that when she finally steps out, he’d be waiting for her, sitting on a bench right outside Kane’s door.

“What a convoluted asshole,” says Bellamy in a conversational tone, and Raven lets out a bark of laughter, all tension in her body replaced with anticipation. Bellamy looks looser as well, finally resembling her quiet travel companion more than the devil-may-care soldier he dressed up as for Kane’s benefit, and that, too, calms Raven more than she cares to admit. “He never meant us to deliver, did he?”

She shakes her head.

“Even paid us under the table,” she says, waving the ‘ship maintenance’ cash Kane pressed into her hand, not wanting to leave any trace by making a money transfer. “Want some pocket money for shoes?”

“You can try, but I might just spend it on bonbons.”

It’s such a ridiculous thing coming from him, when she knows, even after knowing him for a week, how austere he is with himself, but hearing a joke does make her untense even more, makes her smile and drop her shoulders, and look him in the face the way she wasn’t really daring to since they left her bed this morning.

“You know what you’re gonna do next?” she asks, plopping on the bench next to him. He shrugs.

“Gotta find some ship that will take me on, I guess. I don’t know. Didn’t really think that far.”

There is a moment of silence after that; a moment for Raven to weigh fears and hopes in her head, Nygel’s voice from the past still ringing in her ears. She can’t rush. Can’t risk. Can’t put her heart on her sleeve. What if he doesn’t really want her? What if he still loves his ex-wife? What if…

What if she comes back to Big Bird all alone, and has to face her empty ship and empty bed, just because it was too soon for her to secure a promise that they would live happily ever after?

“You should stay,” she blurts out, then looks at him again, ready to take flight at the slightest hint of a cruel word, but for now, glued to her seat. Don’t leave me, she wants to say. Don’t leave me here alone.

But instead of words, she gets a quick nod, a warm hand squeezing her wrist, and for once, for freaking once, he doesn’t need to ask her if she’s sure.

Raven can’t tell how good this is in terms of ending, but deep down, it feels to her like a really good start.


End file.
